FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT VIDYA BALAN - PAGE 5

In Ishqiya, two low life criminals, Naseeruddin Shah (Khalujaan) and Arshad Warsi (Babban) , fall in love with Vidya Balan's Krishna. Krishna's husband is a leading citizen of the underworld. To escape her nagging to surrender, he engineers an explosion, which enables him to fake his death. An unsuspecting Krishna believes it is murder. The purpose of her life now is to punish those who she thinks killed him. So when the middle-aged Khalujaan and the young Babban arrive at Krishna's house in Kharagpur , fleeing the gangster boss whom they have double-crossed, Krishna right away finds them useful.

NEW DELHI : State-run BSNL has appointed Deepika Padukone as its new brand ambassador replacing Preity Zinta. BSNL, country's largest telecom operator with 74 mn customers, has not renewed Zinta's contract that ended last week as it was eager to associate the brand with a younger face. Padukone has been contracted for a year, a Bharat Sanchar Nigam official said. According to industry sources, Depika has been hired at a higher fee than Zinta.

SINGAPORE: Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan won the best actor nod at the Zee Cine Awards for his role in 'My Name is Khan'. Actress Vidya Balan bagged the best actress award for her role of a scheming seductress in the film 'Ishqiya'. Salman Khan starrer 'Dabaang' clinched the best film award at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore . Some 8,000 fans attended the five hour gala event, with 5,000 being packed in the main ballroom for the live show and nearly 3,000 took seats in another hall where the show was 'simulcast'.

In the FMCG world where competition is cut-throat, brands do everything possible to make sure they get 'picked'. Increasing market complexities are forcing brands to be innovative — so from signing celebrities to creating lovable characters to tell the brand story, be innovative is the new order of the day. One recent example is how hair oil brand Nihar from Marico joined hands with music band Chandrabindoo in West Bengal to...

VidyaBalan wore a typical Bengal handloom sari, a red-bordered gorod silk, in the climax of Kahaani . It turned the spotlight on Bengal's handloom saris, which have been seeing a revival lately, thanks to the efforts of a small group of entrepreneurs from Kolkata. West Bengal has a rich handloom tradition and is home to some 750,000 weavers. Handlooms occupy second place to agriculture in providing livelihood to the people of the state. The late Meera Basu started working with weavers from the handloom hubs in Bengal over 40 years ago and produced one of the first exclusive brands of Bengal saris, while Darshan Shah set up Weavers Studio in 1993 not just as a business venture but also as an effort to build an educational centre and archives for Bengal handlooms.

MUMBAI: Bollywood stars like Rekha, Vidya Balan, Aamir Khan and Sonam Kapoor were among the early voters while many celebrities took to Twitter to flaunt their fingers and to tell their fans to get inked as Mumbai went for polls today. Actress Vidya Balan was one of the first Bollywood celebrities to cast her vote. Vidya, who lives in suburban Juhu after her marriage with UTV head Siddharth Roy Kapur, cast her vote at a Chembur booth. When asked about voting in Chembur, she said laughing, "Why not?

NEW DELHI: President Pratibha Devisingh Patil has said that India is acting responsibly to contribute to the global efforts to reduce emissions as the country celebrated World Environment Day on Thursday. The President conferred Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar to Dr. Kamal Singh, Vice Chancellor of Sant Gadge Baba Amrawati University of Maharashtra, Jagadish Babla of Uttaranchal and Dr. Amrita Patel of Gujarat for their contribution in protecting and conserving environment. The Sant Gadge Baba Amrawati University has taken extensive afforestation programmes since 1986.

NEW DELHI: Movies intended to be aired on Indian television channels may soon have to seek Censor Board certificate afresh under new categories. While movies, at present, are awarded certificate by the Censor Board under four categories -- U, UA, A and S -- before their theatre release, films for TV viewing will be certified under new classification. The Information and Broadcasting Ministry and the Censor Board are holding exhaustive discussions in this regard and are also seeking the views of the film fraternity, sources in the Ministry said.